TIROS-1

over top of the Earth.

It did somewhat help the Flat Earth cause that Sputnik 1 was not equipped with a camera, but a few years later, the TIROS-1 satellite was, and it took a picture of the planet from space.

It should be mentioned that TIROS-1 was not the first craft to take a picture of Earth from space.

In 1946, a captured V2 rocket was used to do that from within the atmosphere, just at the edge of space, and then another satellite took one a few years before TIROS-1, but it didn't really turn out.

So when Tyros 1's images returned to Earth, that was really the first time we got a good glimpse at our planet from orbit.

Not from the atmosphere, not a shoddy image, but a true picture of the Earth from orbit, from space.